Around this time last year, many of us had signed up for the American Express Platinum Card under the lucrative Double Rewards promotion. At the time, the welcome bonus was effectively worth almost $1,000 in your pocket!
In my case, the Platinum Card was such a hot deal that I had gotten a whole bunch of househoold members to sign up. Now that the second-year annual fees are about to come due, I’ve been thinking about whether I want to pay another set of the $699 annual fee to keep the Platinum Card open for another year.
In this video, I’ll walk through all of the deals and promotions that I’ve been able to maximize on the Platinum Card over the past year, and show you how I’ve been able to entirely offset the card’s $699 annual fee – in fact, each Platinum Card was effectively paying me to have it!
In the end, I’ll share with you my plans on whether to keep or cancel the Platinum Cards in my household and how I arrived at the decision.
Without further ado, you can watch the video below:
If you enjoyed the video, click here to subscribe to the Prince of Travel YouTube channel so that you don’t miss any future videos!
Hello!
My Amex PP is expiring next week, but I noticed that they actually renewed my $200 travel credit a few weeks ago. My understanding was that they no longer do this, and only renew after the 1 year.
I’m tempted to use the $200 via ‘hotel trick’, but worried that I might have an issue cancelling the card after. Anyone else notice this?
Hi Ricky – do you know if Amex platinum prorates the annual fee if I cancel mid-year? Would like to try to get retention MR as we spend a lot on the card but I don’t see why they would give it to me if they don’t refund prorated annual fee or wait until my next renewal cycle. Thanks!
Has anyone gotten a retention off for Platinum card? I’ve gotten it before when I had a US version of the Platinum card years ago, just not sure if Canadian Amex version is willing to do anything.
Yes, I just received 15000 Aeroplan points as a retention bonus.
Hi Ricky, great video! Just wondering if I call amex for the retention offer, do you recommend to call after the annual fee is posted or before the anniversary date? Thanks.
Either option should work, although I’d probably call in after the fee has posted to give the “oh the fee has posted and I’m not sure if it’s worth it” angle a bit more weight.
For anyone who’s interested I just called AMEX as my plat annual fee was posted yesterday, the agent actually transferred me to their so called “retention team” and I spoke with a really nice lady there but unfortuantely no such offer for me. As someone who’s holding both amex plat and Aeroplan reserve I then asked is there’s anything else they can do, i.e. MR points or fee rebate. Interestingly she kinda promised that they aren’t doing any retention offer on plat nowadays given all the amex offer they did throughout last year and even used the recent $200 grocery credit as an example. She also hinted they’ll be more such offers coming to off set the annual fees later this year. So if anyone got retention offer on plat please let me know so I can get back to her, I mean she’s so confident that they’re not doing any retention offer for anybody, she even left her name with me and said I can call back anytime if there’s a retention offer out there for plat going forward.
these credits along with the positive gains I made with the double rewards last year is money in the bank (and spent). Amex needs to continue to “show the money” in 2021..lol
So if I understand you correctly you are going to renew ALL of the platinum cards you have anticipating a positive return?
Yep. I’m expecting we’ll see enough focus on cardholder engagement from Amex to offset that $499 once again… and if not, then I can always decide to cancel next year, knowing that I’m still up by plenty from the Double Rewards welcome bonus + first-year offers.